WASHINGTON — After years of speculation, estimates and projections, the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States.

Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history.

Such a turn has been long expected, but no one was certain when the moment would arrive — signaling a milestone for a nation whose government was founded by white Europeans and has wrestled mightily with issues of race, from the days of slavery, through a civil war, bitter civil rights battles and, most recently, highly charged debates over efforts to restrict immigration.

While over all, whites will remain a majority for some time, the fact that a younger generation is being born in which minorities are the majority has broad implications for the country’s economy, its political life and its identity. “This is an important tipping point,” said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, describing the shift as a “transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”

Signs that the country is evolving this way start with the Oval Office, and have swept hundreds of counties in recent years, with 348 in which whites are no longer in the majority. That number doubles when it comes to the toddler population, Mr. Frey said. Whites are no longer the majority in four states and the District of Columbia, and have slipped below half in many major metro areas, including New York, Las Vegas and Memphis. A more diverse young population forms the basis of a generational divide with the country’s elderly, a group that is largely white and grew up in a world that was too.

The contrast raises important policy questions. The United States has a spotty record educating minority youth; will older Americans balk at paying to educate a younger generation that looks less like themselves? And while the increasingly diverse young population is a potential engine of growth, will it become a burden if it is not properly educated?

“The question is, how do we reimagine the social contract when the generations don’t look like one another?” said Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, co-director of Immigration studies at New York University.

The trend toward greater minority births has been building for years, the result of the large wave of immigration here over the past three decades. Hispanics make up the majority of immigrants, and they tend to be younger — and to have more children — than non-Hispanic whites. (Of the total births in the year that ended last July, about 26 percent were Hispanic, about 15 percent black, and about 4 percent Asian.)

Whites still represent the single largest share of all births, at 49.6 percent, and are an overwhelming majority in the population as a whole, at 63.4 percent. But they are aging, causing a tectonic shift in American demographics. The median age for non-Hispanic whites is 42 — meaning the bulk of women are moving out of their prime childbearing years.

Latinos, on the other hand, are squarely within their peak fertility, with a median age of 27, said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. Between 2000 and 2010, there were more Hispanic births in the United States than there were arriving Hispanic immigrants, he said.

The result is striking: Minorities accounted for 92 percent of the nation’s population growth in the decade that ended in 2010, Mr. Frey calculated, a surge that has created a very different looking America from the one of the 1950s, when the TV characters Ozzie and Harriet were a national archetype.

The change is playing out across states with large differences in ethnic and racial makeup between the elderly and the young. Some of the largest gaps are in Arizona, Nevada, Texas and California, states that have had flare-ups over immigration, school textbooks and priorities in spending. The nonrural county with the largest gap is Yuma County, Ariz., where just 18 percent of people under 20 are white, compared with 73 percent of people over 65, Mr. Frey said.

Perhaps the most urgent aspect of the change is education. A college degree has become the most important building block of success in today’s economy, but blacks and Latinos lag far behind whites in getting one. According to Mr. Frey, just 13 percent of Hispanics and 18 percent of blacks have a college degree, compared with 31 percent of whites.

Those stark statistics are made more troubling by the fact that young Americans will soon be faced with caring for the bulging population of baby boomers as they age into retirement, said William O’Hare, a senior consultant to the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, on top of inheriting trillions of dollars of government debt.

“The forces coming together here are very clear, but I don’t see our political leaders putting them together in any coherent way,” he said, adding that educating young minorities was of critical importance to the future of the country and the economy.

Immigrants took several generations to assimilate through education in the last large wave of immigration at the turn of the 20th century, Mr. Suarez-Orozco said, but mobility was less dependent on education then, and Americans today cannot afford to wait, as they struggle to compete with countries like China.

“This is a polite knock on the door to tell us to get ready,” said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “We do a pretty lousy job of educating the younger generation of minorities. Basically, we are not ready for this.”

But there are bright spots. Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said the immigration debate of recent years has raised the political consciousness of young Latinos and he is hopeful that more will become politically active as a result. Only half of eligible Latino voters cast ballots in 2008, he said, compared with 65 percent of eligible non-Hispanic voters. “We have an opportunity here with this current generation,” Mr. Vargas said. About 50,000 Latinos turn 18 every month, he said.

And the fact that the country is getting a burst of births from nonwhites is a huge advantage, argues Dowell Myers, professor of policy, planning and demography at the University of Southern California. European societies with low levels of immigration now have young populations that are too small to support larger aging ones, exacerbating problems with the economy.

“If the U.S. depended on white births alone, we’d be dead,” Mr. Myers said. “Without the contributions from all these other groups, we would become too top-heavy with old people.”

5 comments:

Dr. Edward J. Peterson, Jr.
said...

This is one of the most important articles you have ever printed. Whites of child-bearing age seem to be oblivious to this demographic catastrophy or else do not care. It is normal parlance among them to speak of having two or less children. They speak of the murder of their children in sanitized terms such as "terminating an unwanted pregnancy": which would interfere with their career.

They have been re-educated into believing that this manner of behavior is normal and indeed morally right. And they have been abetted by the so-called Christian churches, especially mainstream protestants and the new conciliar Roman religion.

Is not the Roman Catholic hierarchy of America big supporters of immigration? Is not political correctness taught from the pulpit? When is the last time any RC clergyman defended the idea of Race? How many marriages did the Roman Catholic Church stop that were interracial? Does the Roman Catholic Church ever preach against miscegenation?

The answers to the above questions would show that it is the Catholic Church that is dropping the ball and committing Treason. The Catholic Church does NOTHING to stop cultural marxism! The Church itself is Complicit!!! It has nothing to do with the supposedly hypocrisy of "white nationalists". How many sanctuary cities have white nationalists set up as compared to the number of sanctuary cities set up by Roman Catholics?

The biggest traitor is the Roman Catholic Hierarchy! Why don't you write an article on that. When is the last time any Roman Catholic clergy defended the integrity of Race? NEVER. When is the last time any Roman Catholic preached against miscegenation? NEVER.

So Dr. Hoffman, methinks you are pointing the finger in the wrong direction! Immigration is preached by the RC hierarchy. Even if there was NO abortion, the RC hierarchy are promoters and teachers of political correctness, a Marxist ideology. That is heresy.

You are spinning your wheels here. Your grievances are all about the symptoms of our demise. Did you ever think that God will take our nation away from us through immigration and through a liberal Catholic Church because of our proclivity for contraception and abortion?

The symptoms follow from the root.

Moreover, a New Testament Church cannot ban miscegenationist marriages or talk about “race” as you say. Race won’t save anybody. Faith and Obedience to Jesus Christ is what saves.

Race has nothing to do with salvation. I understand that. It has to do with Nihilism. Do you think any nihilists enter into the kingdom of Heaven?

Race has to do with the Natural Order. And it has to do with the Old Order.

Progressivism is about destroying the Old Order. Fr. Seraphim Rose in his book Nihilism, The Root of Revolution in the Modern Age points out that it is nihilists that seek to do away with all aspects of the Old Order. Race is part of the Old Order. It is what God created. To attack the Old Order and/or the Natural Order is to attack God himself for the Old Order/Natural Order was created thru and by Jesus Christ the Logos.

If you read your Bible, ALL THINGS, I repeat, ALL THINGS were created thru Christ. Race was created thru Christ the Logos. In the book of Genesis, one can see clearly the development of race. Furthermore, there are several natural laws that pertain to race. To attack and/or deconstruct the Natural Law is to attack Jesus Christ for Christ created the Natural Law.

The New Testment can NOT in any way undermine or attack the Natural Law.

Treason takes many forms Dr. Hoffman. To betray and attack one's race is an act of Treason. To preach political correctness which is a genocidal ideology is to commit Treason. Jesus Christ had very harsh words for Betrayers and Betrayers are those also who commit treason.

The New Testament does not Abrogate the Natural Law and the Church is NOT above the Natural Law! But thanks for proving that that many Catholics think the church can abrogate the Natural Law at will!

Articles like this get one thing wrong, which I hope to rectify. It mentions the:

"...bulging population of baby boomers as they age into retirement..."

This is going to fool many people, Dr. Hoffman.

"Baby boomers", a truly ugly description, are the most downsized, laid-off and outsourced generation in history. Most of us WILL NOT retire because we CAN NOT retire.

Many of us started over two or three times after corporate shake ups and plant closings and the like. Non-college boomers were the vanguard of the No Jobs Youth of today. And "retiring" is what we won't be doing.

What we ARE doing is taking work from young people just starting out. Simply, this will all get more complicated than the media wants to think.

People just-married and wanting to start families are finding people in their fifties and sixties just won't get out of the way. I can recall that for PART of the time my bunch was starting in the 60s and 70s, "early retirement" bonus money was given to the World War II people to get out and give us younger folk work. It will not happen that way now. Having been wiped out more than once over a working career puts retirement out of reach.

Mr and Mrs White are going to work themselves into the grave and they'll be too tired to worry about what comes after them... maybe that was the point!